


Sweet Release

by ARogueGambit7



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 15:34:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7273786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARogueGambit7/pseuds/ARogueGambit7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Smut. Because S2 existed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Release

  **Sweet Release**  

Milady slammed the door behind her, furious beyond the telling of it. She was also quite drunk, which didn’t help matters. But what else was to be expected, when she was supposed to be helping the Musketeers obtain evidence on the illegal doings of one Simon de Chapuys, and their judgmental stares made abundantly clear what they thought of her methods?  
The door opened behind her. “Are you alright?”  
Milady rolled her eyes up to the ceiling of the ratty old inn. Of course. Of course, there also had to be him. Following her with his dark gaze, his azure eyes burning into her as she flirted and lured their man in. She could practically taste his disgust as she got closer. And then of course Porthos had to get in a bar brawl — the genial man was usually the most levelheaded, except when he met a cheat equal to him in cards. The ensuing dust-up proved too much for the admittedly frail Simon, who retired to his rooms.   
“Am I alright?” Milady huffed a laugh. “I was moments from getting what we needed from him, before your friends decided the night wasn’t exciting enough. Now if I follow him when he leaves it won’t seem like chance, he’ll get suspicious and run. And all evidence of his treachery with him.” She ambled over to the fire place, picking up the flagon of wine and emptying the last of it into a cup on the sparse table.   
“I suppose we’ll have to find another way,” Athos said, closing the door and stepping into the dimly lit room. “One less subtle, perhaps.”  
Milady tossed a look at him over her shoulder, the beginnings of a smile loosened by drink. “You find my actions distasteful. You’d prefer you attacked him, in the open.”  
“Yes,” Athos said, not looking up, busying himself with removing his pistol and laying it on the desk near the bed. “Clearer. More honest.”  
“Oh, I see.” Milady leaned back against the wall, her feet half in the ashes. “You invited me on this merry jaunt knowing my way was not the one you wanted to use. You could have saved me the time.”  
Athos shrugged, in the way he did when he wanted a conversation to cease. “You will be compensated either way.”  
Milady’s head swum. Or was she Anne tonight? The lines all seemed to blur. “So, should I be reading more into this encounter than your Captain’s need for my skills?”  
Athos frowned hard, his fists held to his sides. “Your — skills were needed. But we must work with what we have.” He glanced quickly up at her and away. “You may yet find another way to  … assist.”  
“I could go out to him now,” Anne said with a wry dark smile, before she stumbled slightly back. “You think I couldn’t seduce him in my current state?”  
“You can barely stand in your current state,” Athos said curtly, though he went over to her and pulled her away from the smoldering hearth, where the edges of her dress had been flirting with the embers. She giggled at the situation, and he had to exert himself to get her to move. She hung back, unsteady on her feet, and he was forced to grip both of her arms. Her skin was hot to the touch.   
Anne dipped her head back and surveyed him, dark hair falling out of her elaborate coiffure.   
“I have seduced men with far less of my faculties,” she said, and laughed lightly as Athos looked aside in distaste. “What? You would not hear of my work? I would think you would be eager to hear more confirmation that your false wife is indeed a faithless whore—”  
“Enough,” Athos said firmly, with the commanding tone that always set things to rights in the garrison. It was a voice to be obeyed. “This ends. Now.”  
But Anne would not obey. “He didn’t seem the type to turn down a woman made more willing by drink. Most men are not: a woman who is a sot is a woman who is a slut, you see. And of course once a woman is no longer one of the few that must be respected — mother, lady, nun — then she can be acted upon without any guilt or shame or thought to her wishes.”  
Athos couldn’t keep his eyes from going to hers, no matter how hard he tried. His hands tightened on her too warm limbs. “You are not yourself. You will regret your actions the next morning when the drink is gone from you.”  
“Actions?” Anne raised her brow. “You are ahead of me, Athos. I had not even proposed anything.”  
Athos swore internally at her. “Good. Let us keep things that way.”  
“Why?” For once she would not retreat, for once not obey the unspoken law between them of here and no further. “I have not been drunk in years. I find it rather freeing. And is this not why you do it? To engage in thoughts and actions without fear of internal condemnation?”  
“I am not drunk,” he said, and wondered that of all the possible things to say, that was what escaped his lips. “I told you before that I do not take pleasure in your humiliation, and this is what this conversation will come to if we continue.”  
Anne tilted her head to look at him from another angle, as if it would show her something she could not quite see. “My humiliation was certain the moment I agreed to this farce. Now is merely the denouement. So. If not my humiliation, nor my death, nor even my banishment, then tell me, Athos — what do you take pleasure in?”  
Athos wanted desperately to let her drop, to storm out of the room and leave this cursed heated space. “My work. My brothers.”  
“Ah,” Anne said, nodding almost sagely, though of course, it was also mocking. “Your work. To kill with the impunity granted a servant of His Majesty. I can see the joy in it. I cannot imagine the second part, but then, if I could, I would be a man and you the woman, and we would see what honor looks like clad in skirts.”  
“It is not to kill — not merely to kill,” Athos redefined, bristling at her description of the life he had come to love. “It is to protect and serve.”  
Anne threw back her head and laughed, a lovely sound despite the bitterness evident in every note. “Of course. Of course you would find your calling in doing what you never did before, in answering all of the unmet needs you were blind to at La Fere. You have everything now, don’t you? All the respect is yours, and earned! You are Athos of the King’s Musketeers, finest swordsman in all of France, leader of men. You are beloved,” she said, and the sharpness faded from her face as she looked on his, the soft open vulnerability of uncertainty returning. “You are. How very blessed you must feel yourself. How very complete. No wonder you wished me to do something for _France_ , to _feel_. To you these sensations must be welcome.”  
She was like a whirlwind, a mercurial storm in how she changed. It was painful and infuriating, and Athos fervently wished he could agree with her and end it with himself in the superior position. But her voice and gaze held more misery than malice now, and the man in him responded to it with softened voice and opened eyes. “I cannot regret that you are feeling now. I know too well what it is to become cold and hard. It may protect you, for a time. But you hurt those around you. And when you emerge again, when you feel again, you will feel all the weight of what you’ve done.”  
“And that is what you desire?” She was not fighting him now, not challenging. Her mask and armor were gone as she searched his face. “To see me buried under the weight of my crimes, until I am crushed, my pride driven from me, accepting of the world’s judgement?”  
It should have been. It should have been what he wanted more than anything. “No.” Taking the initiative, seeking to turn this conversation more towards her and away from him and his wants, he asked, “What do you desire?”  
“Desire.” She spoke the word, and he knew immediately how wrong he was to question her. “I have lived for so long from day to day, moment to moment. I have survived. I have had needs — basic ones. To live, each day. I have fulfilled them by serving those who could meet them. I have taken each day with the defiant assertion that I will live, for one more day, I will live. But desire …” A breath went through her, deep and overwhelming, and caught Athos as well, so that he was forced to become aware of where their bodies touched. “I have not felt true desire — not served real desire — in so very, very long.”  
Athos was vaguely aware, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he was _not_ drunk, that she _was_ , that he _could_ leave, he had the strength, the upper hand. But then hers traveled up his chest, to his neck, his face. She wasn’t wearing gloves, it was her skin, only her skin. And she looked at him freely, without artifice, eyes damp and tinged with red, almost as if she had not seen him in a very, very long time.  
He knew it was coming before it did, and yet he did not move. He could feel her arch up, smoothly and more swiftly than she should have been able to manage after all the wine, and then her lips were on his. He could taste the liquor on them, and perhaps it was that, perhaps it was only that, which confused him into thinking he was drunk as well. Because he kissed her back, opening his mouth for hers, allowing her in. She was insistent, hungry, as she had been that night in the alley. And he should have pulled away, like then, only somehow he was kissing her more, taking charge of it, and she was melting into his arms, her own sliding up to his shoulders, fingers buried in his hair. And she was so willing, so needing and soft and insistent. It was too much, and with what little strength he could summon, he pulled away.   
“Athos.” Her voice too, that did not have the cold edge in it as before. He wanted to see cunning in it, the false weakness she had shown to seduce the king. But the woman looking up at him looked stripped of all such tools, lost and certain and wild and honest. It was shades of the woman he had fallen in love with all those years ago, plus the pain of all the years since. He could not maintain his coldness against her, not this version of her, and so when she kissed him again he could only groan at his own weakness, his own pitiful need, and turn his face to the side, to her neck, half-begging her not to continue. She moved her soft cheek to his rough one, and he felt her breath on his ear. “I have desired _you_ , Athos,” she whispered, as if it were the last secret she’d been keeping. “I have. I tried to satisfy myself with your death, and I tried to live with your pain. But I want you. I want you.”  
“You … say this to all men,” he offered in a rough, shaking voice muffled by her hair. “You must.”  
“I must.” She did not defend, did not deny, but did not pull away. Her voice was still in his ear, her arms still around him, her body still close enough for him to feel the beat of her heart. “Yes. Yes, I must. But not to you. You are not all men. And it is you I desire.” He could hear her breath catch. “Do you not desire me?”  
Her touch inflamed him — he could admit that much. Indeed, he could not deny it, not when she was pressed up against him, and could feel the evidence of his need. He had been impossibly hard from the moment he’d laid his hands on her to pull her from the fire. “Why … why do you ask, when you already know the answer?”  
She pulled away from his ear to face him again, again slaying him with those mournful, pleading green eyes. “Because you are not any man. And I must know your answer, freely given, from you alone.”  
Athos knew what she was asking — that for once, she not be the seductress, the enchantress, the bewitcher of men with her wiles. She wanted to be the lady, the woman, the one desired for who she was, not what she promised. Athos slipped his hands up her neck, over the ribbon at her throat, which tensed at his touch. And then he bent down and with lips crushed to hers, gave her his answer.  
She moaned into his mouth, letting in his pillaging tongue. Her hold on his hair tightened, and he wrapped his left arm around her lower back as he drew her further away from the fire. She clung to him, and she was light. It was far too easy to draw her across the room. He felt the bed brush the back of his legs, and he stopped. Some part of him warned him to wait, to consider, a part that was quickly silenced when Anne whimpered and rubbed herself against him wantonly. As with the wine, Athos allowed his body and heart to over-rule his head. He put a knee up on the mattress, and then in one smooth motion they were both laying down. She did not cease in kissing him, did not come up for air until his hands found her bodice and ripped, drawing from her a gasp. He was surprised even at himself, but she rolled against him like a cat in heat and moaned her acceptance. It was quick work then, quicker than he’d imagined, to rid her of the rest. He felt her hands join his where their hips met, hers searching out his laces as he pulled aside her small skirts. She undid his breeches with what he knew was long practice, and he groaned with jealousy and vicious need. She had him free soon, and then her hands were insistent and hot, and then she was insistent and hot, burning and welcoming. She gasped out his name as he took her. “Athos …”  
His hand reached up to her neck and ripped away the ribbon covering her scar. He caressed her throat in rhythmic time with his thrusts, a twisted expression of love if not forgiveness, a perverse gesture of acknowledgment. “Athos. Please,” she entreated him, her hands on his shoulders, tugging at his shirt. He went to her, coming up to kiss her mouth, swallow her sounds. Because she was speaking now, an endless litany of what had to be lies. “Yes, Athos, please. My love. Don’t stop, don’t. This, this, I’ve wanted only this.”  
He couldn’t take it, so he kissed her, which proved no better. For then she was enveloping wet heat, a liquor that burned its way through his whole shaking, shuddering body, as he helplessly drove her into the sheets. It was total abandon, for her as well as him — he could feel it in the desperate arching of her body, the way she gave way when he forced her heavily down, in how she spread her legs for his cock and whimpered against his lips. He had to breathe, and when he released her mouth she moaned his name into his ear, her fingers running into his hair. Her legs clutched him inside of her, and he could recognize, oh God how he could recognize, the signs of her impending cresting. His hands traveled down her body, over her chest and stomach, to find the pulsing need where they joined. There was no lie in the convulsion of her body, in the scream he finally rent from her. Just as there was no denial in his strangled shout of her name as he emptied himself, submitting at last.


End file.
